Metropolitan Classical Ballet New & Reviews

By MARK LOWRY
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

FORT WORTH - Like all art groups, ballet companies repeatedly bring back greatest hits, those works that keep patrons buying tickets no matter how many times they've seen them.

You can bet your grandkid's ballet classes that the Arlington-based Metropolitan Classical Ballet will frequently revisit One Bridal Dress for Two, a blissfully comedic story-ballet by co-artistic director Alexander Vetrov.

Brilliantly timed to three playful movements from Mozart's Symphony No. 29, the ballet tells of a widow (Danielle Cohen) who wants to marry off her two daughters (Mariya Kudyakova and Svetlana Kuzyanina), but could afford only one bridal dress. A couturier (Yevgeni Anfinogenov), two fiancés (Andrey Prikhodko and Anatoly Emelianov) and four bridesmaids join in this exquisitely danced comedy in which coveting the dress leads to trickery, theft and a delightful scene with a fiancé in the gown.

The dancers handled the physical comedy with aplomb, using vivid facial expressions and gestures. This is a work so traditionally Russian, with showcases for most of the company's stars, that it could've been choreographed in the 19th century. It's a major crowd pleaser.

Posted on Sun, June 04, 2006

'Bridal Dress' is a playful, comedic crowd pleaser

Also of that tradition was Leonid Lavrovsky's 1941 restaging of Walpurgis Night, a divertissement originally choreographed for the last act of Gounod's opera Faust in 1869.

It celebrates the spring rebirth of Bacchus (Prikhodko), frolicking with Bacchante (Olga Pavlova), Pan (Emelianov) and a group of satyrs (led by Anfinogenov), nymphs and maenads.

Brimming with athletic leaps and breathtaking lifts, it's another piece popular with lovers of traditional ballet. Except for a fall by one of the nymphs, the performance was close to flawless..

In comparison with those pieces, George Balanchine's 1948 Concerto Barocco might as well have been by Martha Graham. Set to Bach's Concerto in D minor for Two Violins, it's an ensemble piece that makes heavy use of symmetry, delicate pointe work and snaking chains.

Some of the dancers were just out of sync enough to become distracting. But the audience won't remember anything after the joys of Bridal Dress.